THE BLACK ROBE (1881) by Wilkie Collins is one of the author's later works. In this unusual novel of relationships, psychological contortion, and deceit, a priest comes between an impressionable man and the young woman he loves.Wilkie Collins, popular and beloved Victorian writer, friend and collaborator of Charles Dickens, is best known for originating the genre of the "sensation novel" that is the precursor of the modern suspense and detective novels.

THE doctors could do no more for the Dowager Lady Berrick. When the medical advisers of a lady who has reached seventy years of age recommend the mild climate of the South of France, they mean in plain language that they have arrived at the end of their resources. Her ladyship gave the mild climate a fair trial, and then decided (as she herself expressed it) to "die at home." Traveling slowly, she had reached Paris at the date when I last heard of her. It was then the beginning of November. A week later, I met with her nephew, Lewis Romayne, at the club. "What brings you to London at this time of year?" I asked. "The fatality that pursues me," he answered grimly. "I am one of the unluckiest men living." He was thirty years old; he was not married; he was the enviable possessor of the fine old country seat, called Vange Abbey; he had no poor relations; and he was one of the handsomest men in England. When I add that I am, myself, a retired army officer, with a wretched income, a disagreeable wife, four ugly children, and a burden of fifty years on my back, no one will be surprised to hear that I answered Romayne, with bitter sincerity, in these words&#58; "I wish to heaven I could change places with you!" "I wish to heaven you could!" he burst out, with equal sincerity on his side. "Read that."